


Where Desolation First Has Fed

by LucyLovecraft



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bohun POV is most dramatic POV, Grinding, Huddling For Warmth, Love/Hate, M/M, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Obsession, One Shot, Pining, Snow, Unconsciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 23:36:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16820707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: “Live,” he begged the man he longed to kill. “Live!”Bohun finds Jan half frozen to death in a winter forest. He saves the life of a man he both loves and hates.





	Where Desolation First Has Fed

Hatred had gnawed out a hollow inside him and made it its home. Hatred held his heart in its hand, squeezing tight, and that alone kept the mangled thing beating. It sank its claws into his soul, and Bohun welcomed it. It was easier to hate than it was to live in pain.

 _Skrzetuski_.

Who was this man who had kindled love in Helena’s breast in an instant, when Bohun had broken himself for even the merest hint of her smile?

Bohun could not sleep. He’d obsessed over every detail of Jan Skrzetuski, hearing again his easy laughter, seeing the proud flash of his eyes and the strong lines of his body.

Bohun loved Helena with all his soul. She _was_ his soul. So when Jan Skrzetuski had stolen Helena’s heart, some dark alchemy had begun to work upon him. He hated what Helena hated: there was no creature on earth he hated more than himself. His living blood was a poison to him. And he loved Jan Skrzetuski with the only love Bohun knew: hopeless, and hungry. He longed for him as he longed for death.

_When I throw his head at Helena’s feet, then we can both die together. I will marry her at Kiev, and that first kiss will bury all our joys. But she will be mine. That’s all that matters._

_I will kill him._

That had been his hope, his salvation.

But the man dying by the cold fire was stealing that salvation from him in each moment that passed.

Bohun had dreamed of him too often not to recognise him, even at a distance.

The Cossack hurled himself from his horse, staggering like a drunkard, floundering through the heavy new snow.

Skrzetuski had sheltered from the night’s snowfall under a tree, too weak to build a shelter. He lay bundled in his cloak, pale and grey as the winter forest. The only bright spot had been the weather-bleached remnants of the red Wiśniowiecki uniform: a pale memory of the brash red he’d once worn.

“Wake up!” Bohun screamed at him. “Wake up!”

So deep was the snow that the space around the trunk of the tree had become a sunken hollow. Bohun tumbled into it headfirst, showering Skrzetuski with snow as he fell. Yet still Skrzetuski did not move.

Bohun crawled to him, seizing his shoulders.

“Wake up!”

Jan’s head lolled as Bohun shook him.

“Helena loves you, damn your soul! How dare you die, when you have her love?”

How deep that love was. Bohun saw it as Jan’s frozen eyelids fluttered and the blue lips parted. Life and love—the two so entwined that to have one was to have the other.

Helena loved this man. Skrzetuski loved her. And Bohun had sung enough songs to know what kind of love it was that could bring a man back from the brink of death.

With a sob, Bohun kissed him. Jan’s lips were cracked and cold, but living breath still dwelt between them, and Bohun wept with relief as despair swallowed him.

He pulled Skrzetuski close, crushing him in an embrace that he wished could break the man’s bones.

“Live,” he begged the man he longed to kill. “Live!”

There wasn’t time to build a fire. Bohun knew he had to warm him somehow, or the cold might yet claim him.

Bohun was always just within reach of what he desired, his fingertips always brushing what he could never hold. He had dreamt of having Skrzetuski in his power, and of tearing the clothes from his unresisting body, of running his hands over the man’s skin. Now, Bohun lay half-slumped against the bole of the tree, his naked chest against Skrzetuski’s, both of them cocooned in every layer and garment Bohun could find. It would have to be enough. Jan Skrzetuski would have to live. He _had_ to. But the man was a cold, dead weight on Bohun’s chest, and if he had stirred at Helena’s name, he still had not opened his eyes.

So Bohun kissed him as though he would pour the fire of his hate into Jan’s mouth to keep him warm. He writhed his body against Jan’s, clutching at his back, chafing the cold skin. It was a nightmare parody of lovemaking, and when Bohun felt himself growing hard he accepted the cruel irony of it and let lust fuel the heat he struggled to kindle between their bodies.

“Live,” Bohun gasped, opening himself to the madness that had been building within him ever since he first saw Jan Skrzetuski riding by Helena’s carriage. Heedless of anything else, he let need burn Jan’s soul back into his body. “Let him live.”

If God had not heard his prayers, the Devil had.

Skrzetuski moaned above him, stirring, and Bohun gave himself over entirely to pleasure and an acid joy that ate away at all it touched.

He gripped the other man’s hips and arched his body up against him, spending himself with a snarl.

Bohun let out a ragged sigh in the brief, mindless peace that followed.

But when he opened his eyes Skrzetuski was looking down at him, stark horror in his face.

“I saved your life,” Bohun told him.

Jan seemed to be choking: his chest heaved, his mouth worked, but no words came out. He was warm enough at last to shiver, and the only sound now was the chatter of his teeth and Bohun’s heaving breaths.

Bohun still ran his hands over Jan’s body, rubbing heat into his limbs.

“Why?” Jan’s question was the merest whisper.

“Because I love you.”

Skrzetuski shuddered.

In silence that followed, Bohun could hear the snow begin to fall.

“But why would you do this?”

“Perhaps I was tired of starving for what I’d never even tasted,” Bohun hissed, digging his fingers into Jan’s shoulders. “You don’t know what it is like to long for something and know it will never be yours. To live without hope. I had hopes once—for love! for happiness! And you killed each one.”

Jan had faced away as best he could, close as they lay together, trying to find any distance he could. Yet now he turned to Bohun with hollow despair.

Dread stirred in Bohun’s heart.

“And so now you have killed mine.” Jan’s voice was barren and cold.

“What do I care?”

“What do you care?” Weak as he was, there was cold steel in those words. “ _You said you loved me._ If—if that’s so—Christ! What you’ve done is… my God, it’s monstrous!”

“I don’t care if I disgust you. Only live. Live, if you love her.” He kissed Jan’s throat. “Live, if you hate me. _Live.”_

“God. My God!” Jan shut his eyes, and the sorrow on his face then was deeper than any anguish Bohun could have imagined, full of a loss greater than he could understand. “Unhappy man, are you a curse even to yourself? I could have loved you!”

He bowed his head.

“I could have loved you,” Jan whispered.

Bohun heard the sobs from a great way away. Cold had crept into his heart. He lay beneath the trees with his rival, with his love in his arms, and he reached for the fire that had driven him all his life. He found only ashes. Even rage had died, entombed in ice. For once, he felt nothing. Nothing at all.

  



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